I’ve been playing Elden Ring wrong for two years

How far did you get in a video game before you realized you were playing it wrong?

I started Old Ring on launch day in 2022. I made it all the way to Fire Giant and Commander Niall before realizing my build was broken… in 2024. Two years and 200 hours of gameplay later.

Anyway, I solved it AND I AM NOW THE BEST PLAYER IN THE WORLD!!

No, I’m still kind of worthless. That’s for sure.

But why did I have such a hard time, and why did I spend 200 hours playing a game I’m bad at? Learn from my story.

First some context: I am not good at games. Some people are surprised by this. And other people are like… Of course you’re bad at games… you are a games journalist…

ANYWAY, this is important. Because I’ve always loved games, but I didn’t grow up with consoles. I played PC games like Age of Empires 2 And Fable… 2And while my brother a lot of become proficient in for hours Counterattack when we were teenagers i spent a lot of time doing missions with my real friends in City of Heroes. Sex!

All this to say that in my ripe old age I struggle with agility. That doesn’t mean I don’t have fun; it just means people get mad when they have to watch me play!

However, I had a lot of appreciation for what FromSoft had to offer, especially after my colleague Pat made a really great video about how much modern action games have been influenced by Dark Souls‘ design.

But I had no hands-on experience with FromSoft’s games themselves.

So when I started playing Old Ringit didn’t surprise me that it was HARD! FromSoft games are hard; it’s one of the few things I knew beforehand. Also that this one had a horse. Rather.

I solved the difficulty by adopting an aggressive, resigned mindset. I died. So. I will die… and I will die again… and I will endure, because that’s what these games are about… probably?

But I ended up making it a lot harder than it needed to be, and it all stemmed from my assumptions about what it means to “correctly” play a FromSoft game.

I wasn’t naturally as good at it as people who had already played FromSoft games, and I let that guide me… to madness.

Watch the video above to see all the countless and incredibly stupid ways I managed to increase the difficulty of an already difficult game. And if you’re not subscribed to Polygon on YouTube…do that! You’ll see more videos from me, and from people who are better at video games than me.